


When We Were Very Young

by lea_hazel



Series: The Grey Warden's Guide [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Branding, Class Issues, Crimes & Criminals, Dust Town, Forgiveness, Gen, Grey Wardens, Organized Crime, Sister-Sister Relationship, Vigil's Keep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orzammar has a hierarchy, and the casteless are at the bottom of it. Dust Town also has a hierarchy. Warden Commander Brosca finds herself reminiscing about her days as a Carta thug, despite herself. There could be forgiveness, or perhaps only resignation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When We Were Very Young

It was difficult to describe Dust Town to someone who had never seen it, and, not for the first time, Brosca felt a faint, niggling longing for her former companions, frustrating though they could be. Each of them had been down to the lowest reaches of Orzammar with her, at least once during their long stay in that wretched city. The towering stone walls, their feet encrusted with lichen and clusters of deep mushroom, the murmur of illegal activity, the lingering smell of rot and despair. An underbelly, the elf had called it, as though every city had one.

"What was it like, growing up in Dust Town?" Velanna asked Sigrun, almost conversationally.

But not all cities were like Orzammar.

"The difference between being casteless and the elves on the surface," said Sigrun, as she blithely buttered her bread, "is that humans still basically _need_ elves. Or anyway, they have some contact with them. Lots of city elves are servants, but in Orzammar, servants are still a caste. They have ancestors, they have purpose, they _exist_."

"Surely they don't deny your very existence," Nathaniel interrupted, looking scandalized. Or perhaps that was just his ordinary expression. It was hard to tell, sometimes.

"Yes, that seems a little too deluded for credibility," said Anders, "even for dwarves."

She expected Oghren to put up a token protest, but he just grunted and shuffled off to the armory, leaving the table behind him scattered with crumbs and smeared generously with jam.

"Commander—" Nathaniel started to say, but she interrupted him before he got his wind.

"Casteless don't have ancestors," she said, trying to put some steel in her voice. "I told you that, already. Anyone who doesn't have ancestors..."

"...Is not supposed to exist," Sigrun completed the thought without effort.

When Brosca left to check the progress on the northern battlements, Nathaniel was trying to convince Velanna that the Dalish treated the city elves in much the same way as the casteless were treated. Tones were rising quickly, and she was determined to be too busy to comment before anyone thought to ask for mediation.

***

"But I was a criminal," she was saying to Justice another time, as they were inspecting the contents of one of the armories. "A thief, and a murderer." There was so much he didn't understand about the flesh world. Injury, hunger, fear. All the things that a someone made of pure spirit never had to care about.

"Why are so many Grey Wardens recruited from among the lawless?" asked the spirit. "Kristoff was not one such. Why not cull your ranks from among his ilk?"

It took her a few breaths to make her way through his winding way of talking. "Being a Warden is hard and dangerous. You only see the way it is now, after the Blight ended. We just saved all their lives, and so they like us now and think of us as heroes. Wardens aren't always heroes. Mostly it's just hard and then you die young."

"There are so many tales of bravery and youthful death among your people," said Justice. "Do they not reflect a desire to place the ideal of courage above mere survival?"

She swallowed a deep sigh. "Stories are about things that aren't real. Corpses in 'em don't rot, and no one ever loses their leg, and the fields don't burn and leave people to starve in the winter. It's just the part where you stab the dragon's head, without the bits before or after."

"If this fate is so terrible, why does anyone undertake the Joining?" asked Justice.

"I was out of options," said Brosca, pushing down the memories of her last days before leaving for the surface. "I could join the Grey Wardens and leave Dust Town forever, or I could rot in prison or have my head sliced off my body. Funny thing, though." She quirked a smile and shook her head.

"I fail to see what might be amusing about such a fate," said Justice, his face too long-dead and dry to form much of an expression.

"Funny," said Brosca, "that I'd been stealing and killing down in Dust Town for maybe ten years by then, but no one thought to lock me up for the public's safety 'till I started swinging a sword on the Proving Grounds, where the higher castes could see me."

Justice stopped his inspection, put down the longbow in his hands and turned to her. "I still don't understand why that is funny."

***

"Have you never thought about overturning such a cruel and capricious system of governance?" Justice asked, another time.

 _No, of course not, no one has ever thought of that in all of dwarva history_ , she wanted to snap, but again Sigrun beat her to it. This was probably for the best.

"I don't know what it's like in the Fade," she said, "but we're only mortals. We're fragile, and made of flesh, and we're all going to die someday."

"Some of us sooner than others," said Anders cheerfully.

"People want something constant to hold on to," Sigrun continued, ignoring him. "No one wants to let go of tradition, because it's one of the only things that they can rely on to stay constant, even when everything else around them changes."

"Tradition can be a powerful force for good, as well," said Velanna, who was sprinkling sand on the wet ink in her journal.

Sigrun half-sighed. "I know, I know. Not all traditions involve branding small children with hot iron."

" _Brand_ —" said Nathaniel, choking on his tea. "Maker! You must be joking."

Brosca ducked her face to hide her smile. She didn't think the others would understand or appreciate it. "Hardly," she confirmed. "My sister says I was almost three years old when I was taken to get my brand. No one wants a casteless child to remain unmarked for long. They might get taken up by a respectable family, through chance or trickery."

"I don't even remember getting my brand," said Sigrun, shrugging. "My funerary tattoos are much more important, anyway." She stroked her Legion markings thoughtfully. "Do you remember yours?"

_She swore to herself that she wouldn't scream, but she did, anyway. She couldn't help herself._

Brosca gave her head a short, sharp shake. "My branding?" she asked. "Yes. Yes, I remember it."

***

"Only reason I survived was 'cause I was at the top of the pile."

"Don't see how," huffed Oghren, shuffling down the heavy stone steps behind her.

"Dusters got a pecking order, just like the nobles in the Landsmeet," said Brosca. "Take notes," she added to Nathaniel, who was carrying a sheaf of parchment and a steel-tip.

"You mean," he said, struggling to record the Avvar inscriptions and keep up with the conversation, "you were like a vassal to that man..."

"...Beraht," said Brosca. "Maybe I was. More like, I was useful, so I got food. Had a room to live in, walls and everything. Before I was Carta, we slept in any corner we could find. Most do."

"A thief's got better odds than a beggar?" asked Oghren.

"You got pride down in Dust Town," said Brosca, "you die. I was whole and could hold a dagger, so I made it to the top. Don't regret it, they'd a done the same to me if they could."

"And Leske?" asked Oghren.

Brosca turned away from the carved wall to face him. "Leske did what he had to, and so did I."

"So did Branka," said Oghren gruffly.

She nodded and turned back to the wall, ignoring Nathaniel's baffled expression.

***

"You're certainly well-connected, for someone who supposedly came from nowhere," said Anders as he handed her the mail. A number of letters were well-covered with ribbons and wax seals. "How did your sister become the ambassador, again?"

She thought about lying, and thought about telling the whole truth. Neither idea seemed very rewarding. "Caste is passed on from father to son. Rica's son is of the noble caste, so his birth elevated her before I ever became Paragon."

Anders raised an eyebrow. "You both got your caste raised independently of each other? Your mother must have done _something_ right, raising you."

 _My mother raised a bottle of lichen ale_ , she wanted to say, but instead, "My sister was the one who raised me, mostly."

"Explains a lot," he said lightly.

It did explain a lot, thought Brosca. Maybe it explained everything. She hadn't written to Rica often enough, the letters crooked and leaning when she formed them, her thoughts too personal and awkward if she asked for a scribe. Maybe it was time to visit Denerim. Maybe the Keep could handle itself for a few weeks, while she took a well-deserved break for personal business.

***

"Rica didn't want me to join the Carta," she confided to Sigrun one evening, over a bottle of brandy. "As long as I begged and scavenged, she said they would leave me alone. There was only so much lichen I could scrape off the wall, though. Even though I could climb the highest of anyone in our corner."

"I don't remember much about my brother," said Sigrun, "but I think it was his idea to send me picking pockets. He must've known Beraht's thugs would catch me straight away, but his leg was bust by then and Beraht never would have hired him to do anything."

"Was he born with a bad leg, or did he get roughed up in a territory war?" asked Brosca.

Sigrun shook her head. "He broke it falling from one of those broken paths, up by the blocked off tunnel, near where Kessan used to lay those traps for deepstalkers."

"Yeah," said Brosca. "I know the place."

Leske and she had slit a boy's throat there, not long before his nug-brained lyrium smuggling scheme came up. He'd been a pickpocket, but not a very good one. When he brought back nothing but copper and thread one too many times, Beraht had decided he was a waste of food and space.

Sigrun looked at her, and then looked back down at the deathroot she was chopping. She barked a short laugh. "I guess it's just pure chance that Beraht never sent you for my kneecaps, or something," she said brightly.

Brosca looked at her and blinked. Then she burst into laughter.  


End file.
